Suzy Kassem: “We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence and start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.”
Quotes
Quotes on Awareness
Nathaniel Branden: “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.”
Aristotle: “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than mere survival.”
Second Transformation
Paraphrased from Theodore Wiesner
“We come to experience poverty and oppression not only as an individual problem but also as a structural one. Poverty is the result not so much of the lack of talent or drive of individuals as it is of conscious political and economic policies.
Poverty is seen as the deliberate exploitation of people and whole countries for the economic or military advantage of others. Poverty becomes a matter of injustice and oppression, and not just an unfortunate but unavoidable situation. Poverty is a structural problem, a problem of unjust and oppressive institutions and systems, and we are a part of it.
Our first reaction to this heightened awareness is that of anger—anger against the rich, the powerful, the huge corporations, the politicians, the governments. This anger becomes a part of the crisis of this second transformation. We need to acknowledge and express it in appropriate ways. We are challenged to expand the virtue of compassion to include not just those who are unjustly oppressed, but also those who are the cause of the oppression and against whom we experience such strong feelings of anger.”
Fr. Theodore Wiesner, CM, is a Vincentian priest whose work helped shape the Vincentians in Action framework.
Discourse on the Psalms
By Saint Augustine
Praise is the Harvest of Love
By Abraham Joshua Heschel
“The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe.
The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith. To be overtaken with the awe of God is not to entertain a feeling, but to share in a spirit that permeates all being… We praise with the pebbles on the road which are like petrified amazement, with all the flowers and trees which look as if hypnotized in silent devotion.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century.
When You Say Kaddish
By Lynda Sexson
“When I die, if you need to weep, cry for someone walking on the street beside you.
And when you need me, put your arms around others and give them what you need to give me.
You can love me most by letting hands touch hands and souls touch souls. You can love me most by sharing your simchas and multiplying your mitzvot. You can love me most by letting me live in your eyes and not in your mind.
And when you say Kaddish for me, remember what our Torah teaches: Love doesn’t die, people do. So when all that’s left of me is love, give me away.
Memory is an imaginal constellation of past and present that generates a new experience. Memory is not the storing of the past, but the storying of the present.”
From Ordinarily Sacred (1992): University of Virginia Press.
Prayer and Action
By Rabbi David Saperstein
“In the Jewish tradition, the separation between prayer and action is slight. We’re mindful of the admonition in Isaiah where God says, ‘I don’t want your fast and your sacrifice. I want you to deal your bread to the hungry, tear apart the chains of the oppressed.’
And Leviticus 19 tells us that to be holy in the way God is holy means to set aside a corner of our fields for the poor and homeless, to pay the laborer a timely and fair wage, and to remove stumbling blocks. These are religious activities just as much as prayer is. They are all woven together.
After participating in the civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of this century’s great religious figures and a close colleague of Martin Luther King, said, ‘It felt like my feet were praying.’ Prayer is not just the communication we have with God; it is also the work we do to make God’s values real to the world. I think God listens to both kinds of prayer with equal joy.”
Rabbi David Saperstein is an American rabbi, lawyer, and Jewish community leader.
The Long Loneliness
By Dorothy Day
“The only answer to this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother and sister, and living close to them in community so we can show our love for God.”
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist, and anarchist who started the Catholic Worker movement.
On Peace
From Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II
“Peace is more than the absence of war, more than the maintenance of balance of power between enemies. It is more than the firm hold of a dictator that, for the moment, involves no bloodshed. But then, what is peace?
Peace is the result of justice. When society is rightly ordered, when people live as God intends, then peace reigns. Peace must be constantly built up. Human nature must be called again and again to make peace.
But even this is not sufficient. Peace comes, in the end, from love.
When we love our neighbor, even those who irritate us or alienate us, then we give peace its only chance. Unless people willingly come together to share their talents and bright minds, peace cannot be achieved.”
Jewish Quotations on Spirituality and Action
Rabbi Hillel: “If not now, when?”
Rabbi Yaakov Meyer: “Even the seemingly insignificant act is significant when it is part of many cumulative acts. Great people aren’t made from one great action; rather they become great via consistently good ‘small acts.'”
Albert Einstein: “There are two ways to live. You can live as if nothing is a miracle. You can live as if everything is a miracle.”